Navigated Menu Back Financial Times Financial Times UK 6 May 2026 Buttons.Search Options Imbalances are back on the global agenda Martin Wolf Economics martin.wolf@ft.com Settings Translate Article Print Share Listen Policymakers must overcome the fallacy that the way to get rich is by running surpluses forever Again? Didn’t we just have this debate?” This is how the opening chapter of a collection of essays published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, on “The New Global Imbalances”, starts. Yes, we did. We did so in the 1980s, in the 2000s and now, once again, in the 2020s. Once roughly every 20 years, it appears, the issue comes to the fore. This is so for two good reasons. One is that current account imbalances drive protectionist sentiment. The other is that they are harbingers of financial crisis. In the 1980s, protectionist sentiment rose against Japan, which is also where the financial crisis struck. In the 2000s, the era of “the...